WE all knew the spending squeeze was coming. Then suddenly it is no longer in the future and the impact of austerity wallops you on the nose.

You are left staggering with mean choices you don’t want to make.

Poole Council and the Dorset Police Authority are in that grim place today.

Dorset Police had the option of either taking the Government’s sweetener of a one-off grant of the equivalent of three per cent allowing them to make a zero per cent rise in its precept. Or increasing the precept by 3.3 or 3.9 per cent, manifesting itself in more council tax.

It chose the former and the cost could be the loss of 558 staff over three years.

Poole Council, too, proposes the same – a council tax freeze with that Government hand-out in year one but nothing in subsequent years.

It is priotising looking after the vulnerable, which is obviously correct. But other services face pruning.

Will the authorities feel their choices wise in, say, two years’ time if many jobs have gone and services starved of resources?